The inhabitants of Kinshasa, who call themselves Kinois, deal with insecurity and violence on a daily basis. Cheating and thefts are commonplace, and pillaging by street gangs and robberies by armed thieves are everyday occurrences. The state infrastructure is so poorly regulated that deaths by accident or medical negligence are also common. This, and much more, contributes to a challenging social milieu within which the Kinois’ best hope is simply to ‘make do’. This thesis, based on extensive fieldwork in Kinshasa, analyses different forms of violence which affect the Kinois on a daily basis. I argue that the Kinois’ concept of violence, mobulu, differs from Western definitions, which define violence as an intrinsically negative and destructive force. Mobulu is for the Kinois a potentially constructive phenomenon, which allows them to build relationships, coping strategies and new social phenomena. Violence is perceived as a transformative force, through which people build meaningful lives in the face of the hardship of everyday life. Broadly speaking, this thesis contributes to the Anthropology of violence which has too often focused on how violence is imposed upon a population, often from a structural level of a state and its institutions. Such an approach fails to account for the nuances of alternate perspectives of what ‘violence’ is, as evidenced in this thesis through the prism of the Kinois term mobulu. The concept of mobulu highlights the creativity of those forced to ‘make do’ on the streets of Kinshasa, to negotiate not only every day physical needs, for food and shelter, but also to navigate the mystical violence of witchcraft. By exploring the coping mechanisms across all sections of society, I analyse how the Kinois not only have built their lives in the wake of the violence of the state, but they have also found means of empowerment within it, using mobulu as a springboard for the development of some social phenomena. Whereas the anthropology of violence has focused mainly on physical and material violence, this thesis also argues that mobulu in Kinshasa is a total social fact that combines state violence with everyday violence, and physical violence with the invisible violence of witchcraft. This thesis seeks to enrich discussions on witchcraft in Kinshasa and in the African context in general, by analysing in depth how the cosmology of Kinshasa has differentiated itself as a result of the politico-economic events of recent decades. As witchcraft and material insecurity go hand in hand, a detailed analysis of the mechanisms of witchcraft is necessary, if we are to grasp the complexity of the concept of mobulu and how material and invisible violence inform each other.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Mémoire numérisé par la Direction des bibliothèques de l'Université de Montréal.

Over the last fifty years, California has become one of the largest jailers in the world, incarcerating nearly 128,000 men and women on a $10.5 billion budget. The prison population has rapidly risen over this period, resulting in overly crowded, chaotic prisons and jails that became increasingly difficult to manage. As correctional officers and officials lost control over the prison social order, inmates looked to themselves and created a new set of social norms through race-based gangs. What began with the formation of the Mexican Mafia in 1957 now dictates prison social life, where racially segregated cells, cafeterias, yards, and gyms are the new norm. In an attempt to manage this new social structure, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation unofficially employed the use of racial segregation during the intake process for prison housing. The practice was challenged and eventually overruled in the 2005 Supreme Court decision Johnson v. California, but the State continues to struggle with compliance on multiple fronts. This thesis examines the history and development of race-based gangs in California in an attempt to understand how to manage the racially segregated world of prisons today. It finds that tensions between the courts, the State, and the inmates are ultimately perpetuated by the continuance of racially segregation policies, and it will ultimately take the political will of Department officials to eliminate race-based gangs and enact cultural change.

La présence accrue de jeunes appartenant à un groupe ethnoculturel minoritaire dans les institutions pour jeunes contrevenants au Québec est une problématique complexe et préoccupante. Lorsque les études scientifiques se penchent sur les questions liées à la délinquance juvénile et aux gangs de rue, l’accent est placé sur l’identification de groupes ethniques plus à risque de s’associer à un gang (van Gemert, Peterson, & Lien, 2008; Wortley & Tanner, 2006). L’association à un gang de rue est régulièrement considérée comme un phénomène qui toucherait principalement les groupes ethnoculturels minoritaires (Perreault & Bibeau, 2003 ; Spergel, 2009), sans toutefois préciser le rôle plus concret de l’ethnicité et de la culture dans l’association aux gangs de rue. Cette thèse, composée d’articles scientifiques, présente les résultats de deux études portant sur l’identité ethnique de jeunes contrevenants, mesurée par le Multigroup Ethnic Identity Measure – Revised (MEIM-R) de Phinney et Ong (2007). La première étude explore les effets de l’identité ethnique et de la génération d’immigration sur les comportements délinquants autorévélés de jeunes contrevenants judiciarisés. (N = 71, âge 14-20 ans). Les comportements délinquants ont été mesurés à partir du Self-Report of Offending – Revised (SRO-R) de Huizingua, Esbensen et Weihar (1991). La seconde étude explore le rôle de l’identité ethnique et de l’appartenance à un groupe de minorités racisées dans l’association autorévélée à un gang de rue et dans l’adhésion à la culture de gang (N = 69; âge 14-20 ans). L’adhésion à la culture de gang a, quant à elle, été établie à partir de la Mesure d’adhésion à la culture de gang (MACg) de Fredette (2014). Les résultats indiquent une plus forte identité ethnique chez les jeunes contrevenants issus de la première et de la seconde génération d’immigration que ceux de la troisième génération d’immigration ou plus. Lorsqu’on tient uniquement compte de l’apparence ethnique, les jeunes contrevenants appartenant à une minorité racisée présentent aussi des plus hauts scores d’identité ethnique que ceux appartenant à la majorité caucasienne. Les résultats indiquent également que les jeunes contrevenants de l’échantillon ayant immigré avant l’âge de 6 ans et qui ont tendance à présenter une identité ethnique élevée rapportent davantage de crimes contre la personne. Afin de mieux cerner les mécanismes sous-jacents à l’effet de l’identité ethnique sur les crimes reconnus plus violents, il a été convenu de prendre l’association à un gang de rue comme variable dépendante de la seconde étude. En effet, les délinquants qui se disent associés aux gangs de rue présentent une problématique de délinquance plus sévère que les autres (Laurier, Guay, Lafortune, & Toupin, 2015), notamment en ce qui a trait à la délinquance violente (Guay et al., 2015). Plus un jeune contrevenant rapporte un niveau d’exploration de l’identité ethnique élevé, plus il adhère aux dimensions signes et symboles et règles et rituels de l’adhésion à la culture de gang, et ce, peu importe son âge, ou qu’il appartienne à une minorité racisée. Cette recherche fait ressortir l’importance de s’intéresser aux questions identitaires liées à l’ethnicité, à la race et à la culture lors d’interventions auprès de jeunes contrevenants, et ce, peu importe leurs origines.

Thesis advisor: Christopher P. Wilson / For more than a century, the chain gang has been glamorized, criticized, abhorred, and often explained away as an economic necessity or natural byproduct of historical circumstances. After Emancipation, this centuries-old approach to punishing criminals offered an immediate palliative for southern plantation owners in need of field hands, northern coal and steel interests and railroad tycoons in search of blasters and miners, and eventually government officials who identified the South's antiquated infrastructure as its greatest barrier to integration into a regional and national economy. Heavily influenced by Hollywood, the blues, oral histories and folkways, archived photographs, and literary representations, many people now view the chain gang as a relic of a bygone era of southern prejudice and brutality. After all, history does not cast the men and women who served on chain gangs as heroic workers and, if they are acknowledged at all, they are only occasionally figured as victims of the political, social, and economic forces that led to their convictions and servitude. And yet, paradoxically, labor historians and others have argued convincingly that the chain gang, even with all its warts and abuses, actually made southern economic progress possible. Entering this still-vibrant, contested territory, "Restricted Movement" and Coordinates of Freedom focuses on depictions of chain gangs in selected literary works and films from 1901 to 2000, including Charles W. Chesnutt's The Marrow of Tradition (1901) and All the King's Men (1946) by Robert Penn Warren and the films I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Defiant Ones (1958), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). This dissertation attempts to make sense of a multitude of historical and social conditions that bear specifically on chain gangs and convict labor, including black criminality, white supremacy, the Good Roads Movement, race-based electoral politics, and industrialization. In addition to exploring these vexed arguments about servitude and progress, this dissertation also explores how the chain gang, real and imagined, serves as its own special form of segregation. Beginning with the work of Edward L. Ayers, Alex Lichtenstein, Matthew Mancini, and others in the 1980s and 1990s, a handful of southern and labor historians broadened the study of postbellum race, crime, and punishment to consider whether convict-leasing programs and chain gangs in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries really did result in a form of "neo-slavery." In other words, these historians asked, did these practices actually "re-enslave" African Americans in the American South between 1865 and 1940? And if so, what were the social, political and cultural implications of this re-enslavement? How did these practices shape the experience and consciousness of both blacks and southern whites? Moreover, in a culture that speaks so often of slavery's terrible legacies, how might a deeper understanding of convict leasing and chain gangs offer its own particular lessons about race, history, and justice in the United States since the Civil War? My hope is that the methods and approaches laid out in this dissertation will invite other scholars to grapple with the ways in which chain gang history and cultural history inform one another. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: English.

Student Number : 9208006A - PhD thesis - School of Social Sciences - Faculty of Humanities / The term ‘ducktail’ was originally used to denote a hairstyle. In the Post World War Two period, ‘Ducktail’ became associated with a rebellious white youth gang subculture, which rose to prominence in the major urban centres throughout South Africa. Societal responses to the subculture’s identity resulted in the generation of a moral panic which demonised the movement branding it as – amongst other things – the ‘eendstert euwel’ [ducktail evil]. The major aim of this thesis is to account for the way in which members of the subculture constructed and practised their class, racial, ethnic, gendered and generational identities whilst highlighting how society responded to them. The relationship of conformity, conflict and control that emerged between the ducktails and more conventional members of society such as the authorities and academics is plotted. This relationship sets the context for the final part of the dissertation, which explores the moral guardians and rule creators that became involved in the designing of youth policies. Particular attention will be given to how the ‘problem of youth’ brought religion, working mothers, morality, the state of the nation and the preservation of white supremacy under question. In this process, the National Party government formulated policies to monitor, shape and construct an appropriate form of South African whiteness.

Thesis advisor: Thanh V. Tran / It has been well documented that El Salvador faces tremendous challenges in terms of youth involvement in problem behavior. It has also been observed that spirituality and religiosity are important factors in the lives of many Salvadoran youth. While scholarship in developed nations among adolescents and young adults has consistently found spirituality and religiosity to be protective factors against delinquency, violence, and substance abuse, few studies have systematically examined the relationships between these concepts in the Salvadoran context. The principal purpose of this dissertation is to examine the direct and mediated relationships between spirituality, religiosity, and problem behavior among high-risk and gang-involved youth in San Salvador, El Salvador. Structured interviews were conducted with 301 high-risk youth and gang members (81.6% male) between the ages of 11 and 25 (M age = 18.5, SD = 3.3) living in marginalized Salvadoran neighborhoods. Drawing from the Social Development Model, it was hypothesized that higher levels of spirituality and religiosity, as mediated by antisocial bonding and antisocial beliefs, would be associated with lower levels of participation in delinquency, violence, and substance use and abuse. Structural equation modeling, as well as logistic and multiple regression analyses, were employed to examine the direct and mediated associations between these variables. The results of this dissertation indicate that spirituality and, to a lesser degree, religiosity are of relevance to the behavior of Salvadoran high-risk and gang-involved youth. In examining the relationship of spirituality and religiosity to social developmental factors of relevance to problem behaviors, it is evident that spirituality has implications across the board in terms of setting in motion dynamics that are associated with youth involvement in problem behaviors. While not associated with minor forms of problem behavior, religiosity was found to be protective against several severe manifestations of problem behavior. Findings from this dissertation have several implications for social work research and practice. These implications relate to the salience of spirituality and religiosity as protective factors in the Salvadoran context, the differential impact of spirituality and religiosity on problem behavior involvement, and the identification of factors that mediate the relationship between spirituality, religiosity, and problem behavior. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Social Work. / Discipline: Social Work.

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:31:06Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2013-04-05Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T20:21:51Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 franca_ce_dr_mar.pdf: 630326 bytes, checksum: b0a3244d75b8d4309794221ea5a92422 (MD5) / Este trabalho analisou as violências praticadas por grupos de Skinheads e os esforços da Instituição Policial em preservar a Segurança Pública. As políticas penais lançam respostas diante das demandas sociais por punição cada vez mais severas, por meio de penas consideradas por parte da população como justas, visando atenuar os sentimentos de medo da sociedade quanto à criminalidade. Este procedimento leva a redefinições dos grupos Skinheads e das suas ações de preservação das formações identitárias, o que garante a continuidade de suas práticas violentas no espaço público. O objetivo foi analisar como o Estado, por intermédio da instituição policial, articula políticas de prevenção para conter e reprimir as sociabilidades juvenis de Skinheads no espaço público. O trabalho sustenta a hipótese de que os procedimentos de policiamento preventivo colocados em prática pela instituição policial não são suficientes para evitar as violências praticadas pelos grupos de Skinheads; restando, portanto, o papel investigativo, repressivo e punitivo da Delegacia de Crimes Raciais e Delitos de Intolerância (Decradi), inserida na lógica retributiva das políticas criminais. Metodologicamente, recorremos a revisão bibliográfica, análise de documentos e de dados estatísticos da Secretaria da Segurança Pública do Estado de São Paulo no recorte temporal de 2001 a 2011. As fontes foram analisadas por meio dos referenciais teóricos utilizados aqui como “caixa de ferramentas”, a fim de que contribuíssem no desenvolvimento das hipóteses deste trabalho. Concluímos que apenas a punição e a prisão como retribuição ‘justa’ à sociedade não têm surtido o efeito desejado na redução dos crimes de ódio e de intolerância praticados pelos grupos... / This dissertation analyzes violence committed by Skinhead gangs and the effort required by the Police Institution to preserve Public Security. Criminal policies provide answers in face of the social demand for punishment, to be, more and more severe by means of punishment the population has viewed as fair aiming at mitigating the feelings of fear shown by society concerning criminality. Such a procedure leads us to the redefinition of Skinhead gangs and their actions to preserve identity features, what favors the continuing practice of violence within public spaces. It was carried out to analyze how the State, by means of the police institution articulates prevention policies to refrain and repress Skinheads’ juvenile sociabilities within public spaces. This research sustains the hypothesis that preventive police procedures put into practice by the police institution are not enough to avoid the violence committed by Skinhead gangs; therefore, the only thing left is the investigative, repressive and punitive role played by the Police Department against Racial and Intolerance Crimes (Decradi) inserted into the retributive logic of criminal policies. As far as methodology is concerned, we have made use of a bibliographical review, document analysis and statistical data provided by São Paulo State Public Security Department comprising the period from 2001 to 2011. Such sources were analyzed by means of theoretical reference used here as “tool box”, so that they might contribute to the development of the hypotheses formulated in this dissertation. We came to the conclusion that only punishment and imprisonment as a “fair” retribution to society have not worked effectively to reduce hate and intolerance crimes committed by Skinheads. Data show that the frequency and variety of occurrences committed by such intolerance gangs have... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

Not only has gang membership been expanding, but the formation of cooperative ties with Mexican drug trafficking organizations (MDTOs) has been increasing as well. Collaborative relationships with MDTOs appear to be the driving force behind the continuing gang expansion and its subsequent effects. Using social network analysis, this study examines the linkage between MDTOs and American-based gang activity and the potential influence that MDTOs may have in U.S. drug market through their associations with American street gangs. Findings show the MDTOs to be extensively linked to each other by their affiliations with U.S. gangs, and a high level of connectivity exists between U.S. gangs and MDTOs. In addition, various centrality measures indicate the Sinaloa Cartel to have the broadest reach into the illicit drug market, as this cartel is affiliated with the highest number of gangs. The current study provides support for the continuance of multijurisdictional collaboration, and reaffirms the need for law enforcement to continue to explore the non-traditional approaches to crime and intelligence analysis.